Our lives become slightly easier each day as more and more minor tasks are delegated to smart electronic devices. Such devices can manage our schedules and communications, help maintain our health, and do many more things that are so simple that we now take them for granted. But one thing that all such devices have in common is their need for a source of electrical power to support their operation. Most often, such devices are mobile, and consequently, the most common power sources are also mobile. Of these, batteries tend to predominate at the moment.
Whatever the mobile power source may be, its inherently limited nature makes it desirable to avoid power waste when using such devices. Thus for example, devices that support wireless communications may retire to a sleep mode when communications are infrequent, and device processors may go into a low-power idle mode after some period of inactivity in order to save power. Nonetheless, some device features are always on due to the difficulty in knowing when they should be turned off. For example, a device screen may be turned on or off by a user, but would not necessarily otherwise know to turn itself off, because it would not know when the user desires to see the screen and when the user does not.
Since the display of a device is often responsible for a significant portion of the total power consumed by the device, the lack of automated control over power usage with respect to perpetually on but infrequently viewed devices can significantly impact battery life. While certain embodiments of the disclosed principles lend themselves to mitigating such issues, no particular solution of any particular problem should be seen as a requirement of any claim unless expressly stated otherwise. Moreover, this Background section is provided as an introduction to the reader unfamiliar with the subject matter, and is not intended to comprehensively or precisely describe known prior art. As such, this section is disclaimed as, and is not to be taken as, prior art, a description of prior art, or the thoughts of anyone other than the inventors themselves.